When I started my job at the Grant Museum of Zoology one of my roles was to sort out the adoption scheme that, due to an eight month period of closure, needed some… attention.

Now as anyone who knows me personally will attest, when I do a job, I like to do it well. During my A-Levels I was the first person in my particular recruitment batch to achieve all five gold stars at McDonalds. By quite some weeks. This work ethic definitely applies to a job I actually care about. However there is one not at all subtle difference- at McDonalds I didn’t have an arch nemesis thwarting my every attempt to achieve my goals. Unlike at the Grant Museum…

As museum assistant at UCL Art Collections, my job is to help with collections management and other activities in order to ensure the collection operates at maximum efficiency – a big ask given the 2 and a half members of staff (I’m the half! I work 2 days a week), over 10,000 objects and the wide and varied range of activities.

Having come back to work from the holiday closure, I have organized a research visit – a PhD. student from the University of Maryland wants to make an in-depth study of our extensive collection of the works of Winifred Knights – and chased up catalogue orders; a process made sluggish by the traditional practice where everyone tries to accomplish as little as possible before Christmas.

Today sees the start of Spring Term and a highly typical day in the Strang Print Room. Following a lecture in the ‘Works on Paper’ course – a course based at the History of Art Department and run through collaboration with Andrea, our curator – I return the artworks to their normal storage. This is easily one of my favourite parts of the job: there is always a chance of coming face to face with a Dürer or nose-to-nose with a Canaletto. There are more objects to return throughout the day as the Flaxman exhibition which ran last term is being taken down.(more…)